Newsweek has released a new poll that finds that Bernie Sanders has surged to the top and is the Democratic candidate who leads Trump by the widest margin.

SurveyUSA asked 4,069 registered voters nationwide how they would vote in an election today if Trump was pitted against each of the 2020 candidates in the Democratic race. The progressive Vermont independent came out on top.

The poll found that 52 percent of voters would choose Sanders and 43 percent Trump, giving the veteran senator a nine-point lead. Next was former vice president Joe Biden at 50 percent to Trump’s 43 percent, a seven-point lead.

Michael Bloomberg, the media and financial data billionaire, also led Trump by seven points at 49 percent to 42 percent. Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren leads Trump 48 percent to 45 percent, a three-point advantage.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is also ahead of Trump by three points, at 47 percent to 44 percent. The tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang is ahead of Trump by two points, at 46 percent to 44 percent.

The billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer is tied with Trump at 44 percent apiece, Democratic Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar loses to Trump by two points at 43 percent to 45 percent.

Democratic Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard loses to Trump by five points at 39 percent to 44 percent.

Meanwhile CNN’s own new poll also finds that Sanders has surged to the top with 27% with Biden second at 24%. But CNN, shifty as always, could not bear to put that in the headline, choosing instead to go with “Bernie Sanders surges to join Biden atop Democratic presidential pack”

Sanders has made gains nearly across the board, clearly pulling away from Warren among liberals (33% back Sanders, while 19% support Warren in the new poll), a group where the two had been running closely through much of the fall. Sanders has also pulled about even with Biden among voters of color (30% for Sanders, 27% for Biden).

As the campaign has taken a more negative turn, Democratic voters remain about as enthusiastic about a potential Sanders nomination as they were earlier this fall (38% say they would be enthusiastic should he win the nomination, on par with the 39% who felt that way in October), while his chief rivals have seen enthusiasm waning (enthusiasm for a Biden nomination has dipped 9 points to 34%; for Warren, it’s fallen 12 points to 29%).

Sanders is also most often seen as the candidate who agrees with voters on the issues that matter most to them (30% say that’s Sanders compared with 20% for Biden, 15% for Warren and 10% for Buttigieg), and as the candidate who best understands the problems facing people like you (29% name Sanders as best on that measure, 18% Biden, 17% Warren and 9% Buttigieg).

Sanders has widened his lead in New Hampshire, where the first primary votes will he held on February 11, just eight days after the Iowa caucuses in February 3rd.

It finds Sanders is the choice of 29% of likely Democratic primary voters. That’s well ahead of Buttigieg, who led in the last WBUR poll in December but is now in second place with 17%. Biden (14%) and Warren (13%) are virtually tied in third place.
…

The 78-year-old Sanders does particularly well with younger voters. According to the WBUR poll, he has the support of 52% of Democratic voters under 30.

All these polls were conducted after the Iowa Democratic debate where CNN carried out a carefully orchestrated ambush on Sanders, showing that if it had any effect at all, it was the opposite of what they intended. I would not be surprised if Hillary Clinton’s savage attack on Sanders also resulted in a surge of support for Sanders because people can recognize a mean-spirited attack by a sour loser when they see one, and that usually generates sympathy for the target of the attacks.

But course the pundits who occupy the media world will continue to talk about how Sanders is unelectable because he is racist and sexist and his base of support consists ‘Bernie bros’, despite the fact that that basis for such claims do not exist. These people are not there to provide any kind of evidence-based analysis. They are propagandists whose purpose is to drive a particular agenda, however ludicrous the means, like the ‘liberal’ MSNBC bringing on a body language expert to pronounce that according to her Sanders was lying when he said during the debate that he did not say that a woman could not be president.

Where all these propaganda efforts run aground is on the rocks of Sanders’ authenticity. It is hard to make these charges stick when Sanders throughout his life, both privately and publicly, has espoused the same core principles of justice and equality. With most politicians, things that they have said or written in the past usually come back to haunt them because they said things different or even opposite to what they claim now. Sanders is different because his past statements are used to buttress what he says now. Unlike most politicians, he did not trim his sails to suit the current winds, shifting his stances along the way. Instead, he has kept the same course but now the winds have shifted to align with where he wants to go.